Stroudsburg H.S. librarian Bill Lowenburg doubles as a writer

Bill Lowenburg helps young Stroudsburg High School students research class assignments and educate themselves by reading.

The 57-year-old school librarian is also a photographer, researcher, nonfiction writer, and — most recently — a fiction author. His debut novel is scheduled to go on sale this month at Amazon.com.

"The Zorki Chronicles," self-published, is billed as a literary coming of age tale. It follows a high school athlete who leaves sports behind and turns the lens of an old Zorki camera on a fictitious, "slightly dystopian" area in the Pennsylvania coal region.

The protagonist's passions reflect those of the author — history, community, education, photography and the written word's power. Lowenburg's main character is a book lover.

"I really do believe books can change lives," he said.

Lowenburg, while at Wilkes University pursuing his creative writing degree, was one of the graduate students who contributed research to J. Michael Lennon's new biography, "Norman Mailer: A Double Life."

In Lennon's book, The New York Times noted, there's "not a paragraph "» that doesn't contain a nugget of something you should have known or wish you had known."

Lowenburg has shot both photos and jabs in the ring.

He gathered nuggets on Mailer and the sweet science. This led to his own scholarly work on the topic and support from the Norman Mailer Society.

"Bill did a terrific job researching all that had been written by and about Mailer on boxing," Lennon said.

Lowenburg's photography subjects have included boxers, bodybuilders, and — at Fink's suggestion — family. Lowenburg shot images of bodybuilders for six years.

It wasn't just about the surface visuals.

"I was also really interested in their psychology, the obsessive nature of what they do, and the way that their identities are so closely linked to their physical appearance," he said.

In the 1990s, he turned his lens on demolition derby when he revisited the West End Fair. That resulted in the 2005 photography and essay book "Crash Burn Love."

It was about more than crashing cars, he said.

"A lot of it, in fact, is about the repair aspect," he said. "It's about deliberately breaking something to see whether you can repair it."

Lowenburg grew up in Brodheadsville, and he now lives with his wife, Deborah, in Cherry Valley.

After college and working with drug and alcohol counseling, he arrived as a student teacher in the Pleasant Valley School District in 1980. His future bride was a school librarian.

Lowenburg taught social studies for 15 years before pursuing his library degree.

"I liked the idea of not having to follow a curriculum and being able to offer more one-to-one support to students in all different subject areas," he said.

His novel has roots in the buildup to the Iraq War.

Lowenburg felt the government "ratcheted up" tension among the public.

The Zorki of the novel's title is a Russian range finder camera built throughout much of the Cold War. The book heightens modern international issues, too.

"The camera is representative of this idea that tensions recycle from generation to generation," Lowenburg said.

Vicki McGuigan, 32, hopes to teach Lowenburg's novel in her 11th English literature class at the Bronx High School of Science in New York.

A family friend of the Lowenburgs, she helped edit the novel. She said teens will see themselves in it.

"I can look around my classroom and see versions of his characters," she said.

Lowenburg said he has more stories to tell about the word created in "The Zorki Chronicles."

"One of the themes is to celebrate the spirit of being an individual and not feeling you have to go along with the flow all the time," he said. "And the idea that we're really responsible for our own education."

References abound to books in the novel. Characters do independent reading.

Readers might follow suit.

"They're educating themselves," he said. "Hopefully, they'll continue to go on and do that. That's kind of what I always did."

Lowenburg will be reading at 4 p.m. Dec. 5 at Cafe Duet on Courthouse Square.

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